Guild Wars 2

The current state of the game gives almost every class direct access to most, if not all the mechanics of the game. What I mean by this are boons, evades, invulns, etc.

When the game first started, each class brought individual sets of abilities to the table.
Wanted quickness, thief, warrior, or ranger.
Protection, elementalists, guards, or necros,
Invulns- mesmers, thieves, engi

List goes on and on.
I propose that to truly balance the game, and not just the PvP but it is certainly included, is that mechanics need to be reduced to the small subsets again.
Make players and teams make the hard choices about these things. If we want protection, we should consider x. Or if we want quickness stomps and rezzes we should consider y.

Right now there is too much of everything being able to do everything. So obivously players will attempt to min max and take the class that does everything the best. Hence the stacking of classes.
Classes no longer have pros and cons of what to take. It is more of this is > that in this meta. And the reason for this is all the power creep.
We really have to make a change now. Things should always be nerfed, instead of buffing other things. Imagine if countries just kept printing more money everytime they needed it. Money would be worthless and undervalued.

Same things apply to class balance. If you buff the second skill, now you just have 2 overly strong skills instead of one good and one bad. Lower damage and fights will last longer. Do not just give more damage and more survival tools simultaneously. Make me beat my opponent, not their passives and immunity.

I agree that there should absolutely be a major, huge even, shaving across all professions.

Yup, agree.

Toon damage output is out of control. Insta spike damage never, ever, ever works in MMO’s. Anet should have known this condisering it almost ruined their big brother game (L2) way back when.

There also needs to be a test server so that we (the players) can meta test this for (free) and sort out these poor meta’s before they go live.

I think the biggest thing needed is class individuality. Specific strengths and weaknesses that are not simply masked by elite specs.

Just nerf hard all elites except Warriors and thieves.Everything needs tune down.Most new elites have “too much” making old combinations not viable.

Damage is fine for PvE, the real solution is separating modifiers and cool downs across game modes. A four second stun might be great for a vet or elite mob with lots more HP than players, but potentially game breaking against other players combined with a player’s other skills. Cut stun and boon time in PvP, give temporary stability via a meter to avoid excessive stunlocking, rebalance attack and defense modifiers accordingly. PvP is a mess but the numbers seem fine for PvE.

PvE mob health could easilty be scaled such that the PvP changes do not adversely effect the PvE. Its all just relative numbers and the TTK would be the same in PvE.

This would make me really happy.

I already did not like the June patch. The power creep was terrible. It made builds I enjoyed unplayable or changed them in a way that was not fun for me. HoT made it worse. The profession identity went out of the window. The new traits, instead of bringing something fresh to the table, made the game less enjoyable for me.

All specializations did was cover the weaknesses of the professions. So now you could do even more of everything with no draw back.

Homogenizing classes is par for the coarse in many modern MMO games… it is also completely destroying the genre. I hope GW2 stops it before it is too late. GW2 has been slightly homogenized since its inception, but at least there was some level of division.

Completely agree.

The elite spec power creep needs to go so that the core specs have a chance again. Right now elite specs are a must pick instead of an equally strong alternative with their own weaknesses and strengths.

Professions need individuality to be interesting rather than being one big mess of game mechanics with a few professions on top and others at the bottom.

One thing they said a year ago in an online interview: if you make a class that lower skilled players can get powerful with fairly quickly, the hardcore, dedicated 24/7 players will take that class and its mechanics to an insane level and use that class to crush average players.

Yep, Gw2 is starting to feel like WoW PvP

These new elite specs have caused many profs to lose their individuality

I’m praying that the February balance patch calms things down a little.

ALL Abilities simply need a different coefficient depending on whether they are hitting an NPC or a player.

Fixed.

Ability 1 hits a mob for 2k.
Ability 1 hits a player for 1k.

Ability 2 stuns a mob for 3 seconds.
Ability 2 stuns a player for 1.5 seconds.

Done.

If anet really want to push Guild wars 2 as an e-sport, this is the way to do it without royally kittening over the PVE side of things.

lol anet class designs,

if you want to play a tanky sturdy that can be in the middle of team fights? pick a light armor class

if you want to be a bruiser type, play a medium armor class

if you want to be a glass cannon play a heavy armor class

it’s like they got everything backwards.

Mostly because no healers. But thats a different story.
Game is still much fun, I cannot stress that enough. It just needs some fixing.

I also think a major problem is when too drastic and rapid changes are implemented. Before june patch, we had a stabile meta that had been going on for a while, it wasnt perfect, ele was ontop, but now we have too much going on at the same time, which ill clarify below. And as said above, ES brings and covers a lot of previous empty holes, giving classes to much coverage, homogenization. It would be great indeed to see more unique mechanics and boons tied to classes, so that we could take a step back towards vanilla gw2 and more focus on classroles, while opening up options within that. Like currently as an ele ur forced into support/bunkering up with celestial, there’s no burst high risk high reward play variant.

No. Since the beginning, there were no strong classes archetypes in gw2. Since start all classes were able to provide their own healing, speed, bufs, and deal some kind of cc, dd or condi damage. This absence of archetypes is actually one of the key features of gw2. If you like classic rock-scissors-paper archetypes, this is not (and have never been) your game.

And yes, elite specs are OP compared to pre-HoT classes, but that is working as intended. Elite specs are there to make users buy HoT, not the opposite.

venusiano.8246:

No. Since the beginning, there were no strong classes archetypes in gw2. Since start all classes were able to provide their own healing, speed, bufs, and deal some kind of cc, dd or condi damage. This absence of archetypes is actually one of the key features of gw2. If you like classic rock-scissors-paper archetypes, this is not (and have never been) your game.

And yes, elite specs are OP compared to pre-HoT classes, but that is working as intended. Elite specs are there to make users buy HoT, not the opposite.

I would disagree with this statement, as if you review some of the original meta, the roles were very dedicated and cut and dry. You had some central tank, some person capable of covering home, some one mobile dps and two middle ground damage and mobility. There was a reason that bunker guards were used for a while, because they were good at their job.

Now I would say everyone is capable of every job. Some classes will still excel higher at certain things, but the homogenization is the reason why you see people just reroll to whatever can do all the jobs plus one.

I agree. This whole everyone’s a bunker classes is just unfun – a look into the recent ESL matches, and also our own matches, is a prime example. Everyone’s choosing the prime classes to get the job done – bunkers, and all fights are too long.

Each class needs to be shaved down to their original purposes, or at the very least, tone down what’s happening in pvp.

Yeah I mean, in a perfect world every class should be able to fill a variety if not every role, but do so with distinct pros/cons. The game started off not great for that, but it’s kind of spun out of control in the name of balance. I don’t know how much you can blame the devs for that, because balance is hard, but yeah, I wish we could go back to more like launch in this respect.

Take old school warrior for example. Weak to condi, low healing, no prot, devastating cleave/cc/mobility. In theory, it needed a support giving condi removal and prot/healing to be at full potential. Of course the flaw was that there were other classes that could do just as well without needing that support (mes/thief). Devs answer by giving warrior self sustain and condi management… game creeps towards less individuality.

Same kinda story for many classes imo.

I think a major problem isn’t just the class balance but the nodes seem too small. Dragonhunter traps and some ele skills cover the entire point so you’ll have to eat up some damage to avoid the node from turning towards the other team’s color.

Absolutely correct OP. The game would benefit enormously if they pared all this extra crap down, balanced the core specs, addressed long existing issues with weak weapon sets and utilities, and play tested the thing first.

But I have a bad, bad feeling that Anet will keep this thing going in the wrong direction, and at full speed. Whatever love the company had for the game originally has been overrun by espurtz and short term cash grabbing.

Agemnon.4608:

I think a major problem isn’t just the class balance but the nodes seem too small. Dragonhunter traps and some ele skills cover the entire point so you’ll have to eat up some damage to avoid the node from turning towards the other team’s color.

This is a large part of the problem. Node size is more suited for single target skills.
This is why legacy central node is so key to success. It is large enough to actually kite and control the node.